Letters to the Editor: 05.15.97

Voice Of People

East Hampton

May 12, 1997

Dear Helen,

I do wonder why the East Hampton Village Board keeps calling public hearings on the Lumber Lane parking lot matter. They seem to have made their minds up to "do what they're gonna do" regardless of public opinion. In fact, they have piled insult upon injury by scheduling their next meeting for a Thursday, when almost everyone who spoke on April 18 made a plea for a time that might better serve working people - especially those who work in the city. I find their gall unmitigated, and I say this without a personal ax to grind since I do not even use the Lumber Lane lot, parking instead alongside the tracks where my car is (as of now) permitted its two or three nights.

It's interesting, by the way, to note that many in that large crowd felt condescended to by the Village Board. I had been angered by the same perception the first time I came before it. It seems that we are all utterly at the mercy of the village fathers - excepting perhaps those who work in the stores downtown and are too lazy to walk from the Lumber Lane lot, leaving the Reutershan lot jammed full even on the many days when the shops appear totally deserted.

This obscene $5 a night or $250 sticker business reeks of exploitation and spite. Promises of a future Wainscott "transportation hub" will do nothing to fix the matter. It is a promise as empty as all the others made by politicians to hide their paralysis in the face of real problems. Nancy McCaffrey and Tom Knobel, who showed up last time, added nothing but their own vacuous babble, but then, what could they do?

The village seems determined to dump the matter on the town, even though the East Hampton railroad station is right smack in the village. If exorbitant rents have turned a once pleasantly varied village into a mecca for strolling tourists and consumers of luxury items, perhaps the landlords should be taxed to provide the revenue the village fathers seem intent on squeezing out of the townsfolk.

Because it's really about money, isn't it? The village spent some (probably too many) dollars to upgrade the parking, and it rankles them. They'll get it back, by hook or by crook! God forbid that they should ever listen to the voice of the people.

Best wishes,

SILVIA TENNENBAUM

Letter Home From Boynton Beach

May 8, 1997

Dear Editor,

Each September, the Suffolk County Fair was held at the Riverhead Fair Grounds. Any student who wanted to attend did not have to play hooky from school, for a trip to the fair was a legal absence. Many older people attended, as well as parents and their school-aged children.

It was quite common for those without cars to travel on the "Scoot." It was an excellent way to go to the fair and not that expensive. The Scoot, a two-car train, ran from Amagansett to Greenport on a daily run. It left Amagansett at 10 a.m. and arrived in Greenport at 2 p.m. It stopped at each station, and after leaving Eastport on its western run, it took the rail spur to Manorville.

Before becoming known as Manorville, the small hamlet was known as St. George's Manor, and before that, Punk's Hole. In the 1840s, when the Long Island Rail Road was extended through Suffolk County to Greenport, Punk's Hole was selected as wood stop. A short time later, the stop was renamed St. George's Manor. One day, for some unknown reason, the station agent grabbed a paintbrush and painted out St. George's, and left the word "Manor." The name was accepted by the local people, and some years later, the Long Island Rail Road lengthened it to Manorville.

Because of the Scoot's semicircular route to Greenport, it was called the Cape Horn Express. The two cars that it hauled were a passenger car and a combination passenger-baggage car. Paddy Murray, of Amagansett, was the engineer, and made that run for many years, until its demise in 1931.

A story, which originated in Springs, was about a man who desperately wanted to take his wife and son to the fair, but had no money to attend. After thinking of numerous ways to obtain money and then discarding them, he settled upon selling the kitchen stove. He figured he would worry about getting another after they returned from the fair. He must have had a stroke of good fortune, for they attended many fairs afterward.

Another outing, which many East End people enjoyed, was a trip, by ferry, from Sag Harbor to New London. The ferry Shinnecock left daily from Long Wharf and made stops at Shelter Island, Greenport, and Orient before crossing the Sound to New London. By about 1925, that ferry service began to phase out, and at the end of the 1927 summer season, the Shinnecock made her final trip.

A train derailment, which took six lives, occurred on Friday, Aug. 13, 1926, when the Shelter Island Express, on its way to Greenport, jumped the tracks at Calverton. The six-car train, including a Pullman car, was carrying nearly 400 passengers when it crashed into a pickle-making plant at a high rate of speed, killing four of the 32 Pullman car passengers and the two engineers. Among the passengers killed was Hamilton Fish, a noted New York stockbroker. It was the worst train wreck to occur on the East End, and it became known as the Great Pickle Works Wreck.

Before the wreckage had been cleared, and the cars removed, thousands of people visited the crash site. We went to the scene in our Model T touring car that Sunday. The road to Riverhead was much different from the one of today. There was no North Road from Southampton, past Shinnecock Hills Golf Club, to the Canoe Place Bridge. Instead, the route went by way of Southampton Main Street, up Hill Street, past the Indian Reservation, and through Shinnecock Hills to the Canoe Place Bridge. From there, the route continued over a rickety wooden railroad bridge, and on through the Hampton Bays business section to the Riverhead-Flanders Road. Upon arriving in Riverhead, one turned left on West Main Street and continued on it to River Road, and then followed the route and sightseers, until arrival at the accident scene.

It was a lengthy trip by the standards of that time. Cars rarely traveled in excess of 35 miles per hour, and there were some that had difficulty maintaining that rate of speed. Traveling through business districts of the villages was limited to 20 miles an hour, and usually there were motorcycle policemen in the vicinity to enforce the limit.

One of the biggest concerns on a driver's mind was the dreaded flat tire, which occurred all too frequently. If a driver had no spare tire, he had to jack up the car, remove the wheel, and then begin the most time-consuming part. The tire had to be removed from the rim and the tube removed from the tire. He inflated it with a hand pump, which most drivers carried, and then looked for cuts or punctures. He was fortunate, indeed, if he had only one puncture.

After inflating the tube, most drivers found the puncture by spitting on the suspected spot. If a bubble appeared, he knew he had located the leak. He continued a careful inspection of the tube until he was certain he had no more. Then he marked each leak with chalk and opened his patching kit. After patching the puncture(s), he placed the tube in the tire. He had to be cautious not to pinch the tube while putting the tire back on the rim. Each car, when purchased, was provided with a set of tire irons. Without them, a tire could not be removed from a rim. Most conscientious drivers strapped several tires to the car when going out of town. By doing do, they would not have to go through the tire patching ordeal.

The late Mabel Smith of Springs told of the time a chap, also of Springs, and his family took a Sunday ride to Eastport to visit his sister. It seems that poor soul experienced 167 flat tires on that fateful day to and from Eastport. Somewhere, near Springs, at a very late hour, they had to abandon the car, and continue the trip on foot. As they passed through Kingstown, the poor chap's wife awoke most of its residents, as she screamed and yelled at him. Ever after, she was known by the people of Kingstown as the Nightingale.

In October 1932, another train wreck occurred on the big curve at Rod's Valley in Montauk. The engineer, who had relieved the regular one, Jim Eichhorn of Amagansett, was killed instantly. The fireman, seriously burned by steam, died later in Southampton Hospital. It was the worst wreck to occur on the Montauk branch of the Long Island Rail Road. A wrecking crew worked for two nights and three days before the wreck was cleared and train service resumed.

Along about the fifth grade, I developed a close relationship with Johnny Byrnes, who came from Westbury with his family in 1927. When we were not in school, on weekends, vacations, or playing ball games, we spent many happy hours roaming the fields, hedgerows, and woodlands north and west of Cedar Street.

While walking those fields and woods, we learned about nature and wildlife. To walk through the woods listening to the wind sighing as it passed through the boughs of the many trees was like hearing a beautiful symphony. We learned to identify the cries of blue jays, wood thrushes, crows, hawks, the singing of sparrows, orioles, redwing blackbirds, and other songbirds of the woods, fields, and hedgerows. We identified the odors left by foxes and skunks.

In the spring, the drumming of the ruffed grouse could be heard in the surrounding woodlands. To see a male grouse strutting with an extended ruff, his tail erect and fanned out, and his wings trailing along the ground is a rare sight. When going through his mating ritual, he performs very much like a miniature tom turkey.

In our wanderings through the fields and woodlands, we observed many species of birds, especially bluebirds, as they flew among the hedgerows. We learned the habits of the small wild animals that lived in hedgerows, at the edge of fields, and in the deeper woods. It is amazing the knowledge one can gather by traipsing through the woodlands and fields of an unspoiled countryside with a young and open mind.

Little did we know, as we learned about nature among the hedgerows of Cedar Street, that Johnny would be killed in a similar area, which the G.I.s of World War II knew as the boscage countryside of Normandy. Johnny had a rather short military career, being drafted from a war-plant job in December 1943. He arrived in France on Aug. 1, 1944, and was killed in action on Aug. 8, 1944. God love you, Johnny.

One year, around 1929, or 1930, Danny Bahns, whom we called Sonny, his brother, Frankie, and I walked Long Lane and on down Two Holes of Water Road, to a two-rut woods road. We were after a white pine Christmas tree for the Bahns family. At the time, that area of Northwest had an abundance of white pine trees. In only a short time after our arrival, the Bahns boys selected a tree to their liking and cut it down. We left the Chatfield's Hole area and returned home, taking turns carrying the tree to Race Lane. One thing about those days was that we got a lot of exercise by walking to and from our destinations.

As we grew a little older, we earned a few dollars picking strawberries for Ferris Talmage and Sam Field. Each June, during Regents week, we set out, in the early morning, for the Roberts Lane strawberry patches. To prevent our low limbs from becoming wet with dew, we wore hip boots. We were paid three cents a quart. After picking 100 quarts, we called it a day. We were paid on the spot, with the hopes that tomorrow would be another nice day so we could earn another three dollars.

During the summer, a number of teenagers from below the bridge area spent many sunny afternoons diving or swimming off a large wooden float moored at the Three Mile Harbor dock. At that time, there was no bulkhead that paralleled the Three Mile Harbor-Hog Creek Road. A fellow learned to swim quickly there, whether he liked it or not, because someone was going to push him overboard. Then it was up to him to dog paddle or sink. Some of the kids became excellent swimmers.

Asa Peckham would go to the dock, dive overboard, and take a casual swim to the channel near Halsey's Marina and then return to the wooden float. Often, Johnny Byrnes would accompany Asa. There were times when both of them swam from the Maidstone Park side of the breakwater to Sammis Beach. Because of the strong tidal currents, only the better swimmers spent an afternoon swimming back and forth at the breakwater.

Others hitchhiked to Steve Palmer's Maidstone Boatyard to swim off the float, which was anchored offshore between the main channel and the boat yard. Still others went a little farther north and swam in Gardiner's Bay at Maidstone Park.

Maidstone Park attracted some of the older boys, because there were a number of pretty young girls from Springs and from Maidstone Park who swam there nearly every day. The girls from Maidstone Park were mostly from Queens and spent summers there in small cottages with their parents.

At Maidstone, at the time, there stood a wood-shingled bathing pavilion, complete with bathing lockers. It was located on the high ground between the picnic-table area and the boardwalk that led to the beach. From the roofed porch, which extended the width of the structure, one would enjoy a beautiful view of Gardiner's Bay, Shelter Island, and the Orient area of the North Fork. A short distance to the east of the pavilion stood a small wooden pump house, which had a pitcher pump for the convenience of the bathers.

Each year, at the beginning of the bathing season, a caretaker was hired to maintain the facilities and to oversee park activities. When the Republicans were in the majority on the Town Board, Gilbert Lester of Springs was hired, and, in 1934 and 1935, when the Democrats were in the majority, Selah Lester of Round Swamp was hired.

Many families, churches, and organizations held picnics there for many years without incident. Each summer, the youngsters looked forward, with glee, to spending a day of picnicking with their families and Sunday-school friends. If it were not for the wealthy summer residents, in their benevolence, who gave East Hampton Maidstone Park, Fresh Pond Park, Guild Hall, the East Hampton Free Library, and other properties, the local townsfolk's recreational activities would have been sorely limited. Due to their generosity and goodness, the residents of East Hampton have enjoyed many generations of enjoyment and relaxation.

In the years before World War II, carnivals were rather well attended. After they had been banned in East Hampton Village, the Sag Harbor Fire Department sponsored them. They were held each August near the site of the old Sag Harbor railroad station. There were the usual rides, chance games, and refreshments. As there was no television to keep them home, people went to a carnival mostly for something to do, and to see folks that they had not seen since last year's carnival.

For several years, each carnival had an act that went on shortly after 11 p.m. each night. Some acts had a trained dog leap from a high platform into a small tank of water, and another act substituted the dog for a man, who dived into a larger and deeper tank of water. Of all the acts, Cannonball Richards's was the most popular. A little after 11 o'clock, a cannon would be rolled in, and out from the throng came Cannonball, clad in an undershirt and a pair of trousers, carrying a sledge-hammer and a few large pie plates. After being introduced, he'd take a bow, and request some young man to take the sledge-hammer and hit him in the stomach with it. Before being struck, Richards braced himself and held a pie plate at the target area. Pow! Cannonball stood firm as the sledge struck the pie plate. He'd hold up the badly dented pie plate for all to see. After two or three young blades tried their luck, he got all braced for the main event.

He stood close to the muzzle of the cannon with a pie plate covering his stomach. When everything was in place, he ordered his assistant to fire. When that ball hit him, it drove him backward doing somersaults of some kind. After the smoke cleared, Cannonball stood and took a bow. He performed that act during the '20s as well as the '30s. How he withstood those severe blows to his stomach, night after night, God only knows. He must have overseen the loading of the cannon, for if he didn't he must have had complete confidence in his assistant.

(To be continued.)

Sincerely,

NORTON (BUCKET) DANIELS

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